An ecocritical reading of the river Thames in selected Fin de Siècle literature

<p>Our interaction with the natural environment plays a pivotal role in our survival as a species</p> <p>on earth. By foregrounding the River Thames, this thesis demonstrates how nature plays a part</p> <p>in our everyday recreation, in what way it can aid in the construction of our identities and</p> <p>finally how our treatment of it can have an adverse or beneficial effect on our own existence.</p> <p>These exchanges with nature are revealed by ecocritically examining the central themes of</p> <p>leisure, national identity, and sanitation from ten underexplored literary texts that represent the</p> <p>Thames during the fin de siècle.</p> <p>From the primary research, two dominant narratives were seen to be associated</p> <p>with the River: progress and decline, with the former having been overstated by critics.</p> <p>Therefore, the Thames is critically examined amid a sphere of Victorian progress. This thesis</p> <p>contributes to the field of Victorian ecocriticism, a discipline that Mazzeno and Morrison argue</p> <p>has the potential to unlock “the canon to include new works that contribute to an overall</p> <p>understanding of the period” (2016, p.10). Thus, by adopting the novel approach of</p> <p>ecocriticism, this thesis enables a ‘new’ understanding of fin de siècle literature that centralises</p> <p>the natural environment.</p> <p>Through an analysis of Leslie’s Our River, the Pennells’ The Stream of</p> <p>Pleasure, and Ashby-Sterry’s A Tale of the Thames, the first chapter reveals how, through the</p> <p>theme of leisure, the Thames was part of a thriving Victorian consumerist culture where an</p> <p>aestheticisation, a reification and a hierarchical usage of the waterway was prominent,</p> <p>suggesting a social ecology along the River. Chapter Two builds on these ideas of capital and</p> <p>leisure by viewing the Thames in the wider context of nationhood through the exploration of</p> <p>De Vere’s ‘To the Thames’, Blind’s ‘To the Obelisk’, Gosse’s ‘The Shepherd of the Thames’</p> <p>and Davidson’s ‘The Thames Embankment’. Through an ecocritical analysis of national</p> <p>identity within these poems, I claim that all four of the works can be read as ecopoems. I then</p> <p>interrogate the stability of an English and British identity that is often associated with the</p> <p>Thames. From this, I question how sanitation played a role in the River’s literary image by</p> <p>examining Barr’s ‘The Doom of London’, Allen’s ‘The Thames Valley Catastrophe’, and</p> <p>White’s ‘The River of Death’ within Chapter Three, where I consider a metaphorical sanitation</p> <p>(via natural forces), and a literal sanitation that can be traced to nineteenth-century public health</p> <p>reform. I also adopt the ecocritical theory of the post-pastoral to explore the powerful impact</p> <p>that nature imposes upon humanity.</p> <p>This thesis contributes to our understanding of how the Thames was represented</p> <p>in a positive way within literature during the fin de siècle, by suggesting that it was bound with</p> <p>three dominant themes: leisure, national identity, and sanitation. I also suggest that through</p> <p>reading the River, we can gain a cultural understanding of humanity’s relationship with the</p> <p>natural world by highlighting three ecocritical relationships that exist along a continuum:</p> <p>anthropocentric, symbiotic, and ecocentric. I further claim that, through numerous</p> <p>connections, there existed a “network” of writers who, together, through their writings,</p> <p>popularised the Thames during the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century.</p> <p>Ultimately, I argue that literature has the potential to enable a more widespread knowledge and</p> <p>understanding of how nature functions and coexists alongside humanity</p>